"Göre" ("According To"): Opinions, Sources & Comparisons

Turkish doesn’t have a separate word for “in my opinion,” “depending on,” and “compared to” — one small postposition, göre, covers all three jobs. Whatever noun or pronoun stands right before it always wears the dative case, and from there göre flexes to fit the sentence around it.

What this word does

Göre always follows a dative-marked noun or pronoun, and together they mean “according to X” — but “according to” stretches across three related ideas in Turkish, all handled by the same word:

• Bana göre bu doğru. — According to me, this is correct. (opinion)
• Hava durumuna göre yarın yağmur yağacak. — According to the forecast, it’ll rain tomorrow. (based on a source)
• Sana göre bu iş çok kolay. — Compared to you, this job is very easy. (relative comparison)

In every case, göre is pointing at something — a person’s viewpoint, a source of information, or a point of reference — and saying “measured against that.”

Forming it

The rule is simple and has no exceptions: whatever comes directly before göre must carry the dative suffix -e/-a (or -ye/-ya after a vowel-final word that needs the buffer consonant). This holds whether that word is a noun, a proper name, or a personal pronoun:

Notice that the pronoun column uses the dative forms (bana, sana, ona …), not the genitive possessive forms (benim, senin, onun …) you’d use for ownership elsewhere. “My opinion” tempts English speakers toward a possessive, but Turkish keeps göre anchored to the dative no matter what sits in front of it.

The three everyday meanings

1. Stating an opinion. This is the most common use — [pronoun]+e göre to frame a personal judgment, exactly like English “in my opinion” or “according to me”:

• Bana göre bu film çok uzun. — According to me, this film is too long.
• Sence bu doğru mu? → Sana göre bu doğru mu? — Is this correct, according to you? (sence is a shorter, informal alternative built straight onto sen — but sana göre works everywhere and is the safer form to learn first.)

2. Reporting something based on a source. Any noun naming a source of information — a report, a forecast, a rule, a piece of news — can stand before göre to mean “according to [that source],” “based on [that source]”:

• Bu rapora göre satışlar arttı. — According to this report, sales have increased.
• Kurallara göre burada sigara içilmez. — According to the rules, smoking isn’t allowed here.

3. Making a relative comparison. Göre can also mean “relative to” or “compared to,” setting up one thing as the yardstick for judging another:

• Geçen yıla göre bu yıl daha sıcak. — Compared to last year, this year is warmer.
• Kardeşine göre o daha sakin. — Compared to his/her sibling, he/she is calmer.

Exceptions and things that trip learners up

Don’t confuse göre’s case with its neighbors. Several other Turkish postpositions sit in the same “relating one thing to another” territory but each demands its own case, and mixing them up is an easy mistake:

• İçin (“for”) usually attaches straight to a bare noun with no case ending at all: benim için (“for me”), bu iş için (“for this job”).
• Kadar (“as much as” / “until”) can take either a bare-ish comparison form (senin kadar, “as much as you”) or the dative when it means “until” (akşama kadar, “until evening”) — which one depends on which of its two meanings you’re using.
• Göre only ever takes the dative, in every one of its three meanings above — there’s no bare-noun version of it to fall back on.

A fuller clause can stand in for the noun before göre. Attaching göre after a verb turned into a noun-like clause with -DIğI lets you say “depending on whether/that …” or “given that …,” rather than just “according to [a noun]”:

• İstediğine göre bu farklı bir cevap olabilir. — Depending on what you want, this could be a different answer.
• Toplantı saati değiştiğine göre seni birazdan tekrar ararım. — Since the meeting time has changed, I’ll call you back shortly.

This pattern reads as either “depending on …” or “given that / since …” depending on the verb inside it — it’s worth recognizing once you’re comfortable with the basic noun-plus-göre pattern, even though it leans more advanced.

Examples

• Bana göre Türkçe İngilizceden daha zor. — According to me, Turkish is harder than English.
• Haberlere göre hava yarın çok soğuk olacak. — According to the news, the weather will be very cold tomorrow.
• Sana göre hangi restoran daha iyi? — Which restaurant is better, according to you?
• Öğretmenime göre bu ödev çok uzun. — According to my teacher, this homework is too long.
• Geçen haftaya göre bugün trafik daha az. — Compared to last week, the traffic is lighter today.
• Ona göre her şey yolunda. — According to him/her, everything is fine.

Try it yourself

Babi, Speafy’s AI tutor, will have you weigh in with your own opinion on everyday topics until bana göre comes out before the dative reflex even needs thinking about, and Speafy’s FSRS-based flashcards keep the dative-pronoun forms — bana, sana, ona — fresh so they never slip back toward the genitive by habit.